The Big Picture · Discussion · Interview
December 20, 2022/ 77 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins
Sean and Amanda run through the year's best performances, actor by actor, then Adam Nayman joins to fight about Alejandro González Iñárritu's Bardo.
22 films across 3 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
The Actors Who Won 2022
Tom Cruise, whose real-life skydive test videos got nearly as much airtime this week as the movie. Miles Teller plays Goose's son more restrained than either host expected; Glenn Powell is pure movie-star id as Hangman; Jennifer Connelly gets the thankless love-interest role and makes every scene of it work anyway.
Cate Blanchett as conductor Lydia Tár, the performance the whole movie is built around, down to the custom suiting.
Michelle Yeoh holds a multiverse movie together on pure range: martial artist, laundromat owner, mother, sci-fi lead, and genuinely funny throughout.
Austin Butler's first performance to really register beyond a small Once Upon a Time in Hollywood supporting turn: he has charisma and presence past the impersonator cliché. Sean liked the film less than Amanda did, mostly over its chopped-up flashback structure.
Colin Farrell, quiet and restrained, in Kogonada's family sci-fi, the first of three performances from him this year.
Farrell under latex as the Penguin, having a lot of fun hamming it up.
Farrell's best of the three: a simple, charming man trying to understand why his best friend has abandoned him, a long way from the guy who played Bullseye in 2006's Daredevil.
Keke Palmer, praised in brief.
Mia Goth in dual roles for Ti West's slasher.
Goth's origin story for one of her X characters, built around a six-minute monologue the camera just holds on her face.
Hong Chau elevates a chef's-table satire the moment she starts herding the boat group off the dock.
Chau finding layers in an underwritten role, meeting Brendan Fraser where he is.
Aubrey Plaza doing character work: an accent, no makeup, a stripped-down performance far from the sarcastic Parks and Rec register she's known for.
Dolly De Leon steals the film's third act; a likely Best Supporting Actress nominee if the film gets a Best Picture nod.
Anthony Hopkins as James Gray's grandfather stand-in, maybe the film where he's most clearly playing himself, gravitas and all.
Honorable mentions
Justin Long's entrance is the hardest either host laughed all year, in a movie that hadn't been comic up to that point.
Brian Tyree Henry, in what plays as a two-hander with Jennifer Lawrence.
Lashana Lynch and Thuso Mbedu, both terrific; Mbedu in particular takes the movie over in its back half.
Jake Gyllenhaal, turned up to 13 opposite Michael Bay: not a good performance, but a fun one.
Tang Wei, singled out as exceptional.
Paul Mescal and his young co-star Frankie Corio, both wonderful.
In conversation
Critic Adam Nayman joins to argue about Alejandro González Iñárritu's quasi-autobiographical film about a documentarian caught between Mexico and Hollywood. Amanda watched the shorter theatrical cut and slept through parts of it; Sean saw the original three-hour version at Telluride before Iñárritu trimmed 15 to 20 minutes. Nayman, who has written at length about Iñárritu, calls the film a show of technical power in service of not much: self-aggrandizement over the sincere material (a dead child, a fractured national identity) buried inside it. All three agree the film's ocean sequence, dealing with the loss of a child, genuinely got to them, even as they otherwise found the movie insufferable.
Also mentioned raised along the way
In passing Once Upon a Time in HollywoodHustlersLightyearMinions: The Rise of GruTotal RecallRoald Dahl's Matilda the MusicalUnder the BoardwalkAsteroid CityGlass Onion: A Knives Out MysteryGuillermo del Toro's Pinocchio
Iñárritu's back catalog, discussed at length Amores Perros21 GramsBabelBirdmanThe Revenant
Comparison points RomaMankThe FabelmansLicorice Pizza
Oscar trivia (Ingrid Bergman's three wins) Murder on the Orient ExpressGaslightAnastasiaCasablanca
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV The White LotusAtlantaParks and RecreationWednesday
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Podcasts Gamblers